Building a Culture of Learning

In this day and age, we are all well aware of the power of information and the importance of continually learning and incorporating new learnings into practice.  But given the constant onslaught of competing priorities and demands, how do we make time for this practice and ensure that we are building and maintaining a culture of learning in our organizations?

As described by John Mayne in his brief on Building an evaluative culture for effective evaluation and results management, organizations with a strong evaluative culture “engage in self-reflection and evidence-based learning and encourage experimentation and change.” According to Mayne, organizations must have committed leadership, organizational support structures such as supportive systems, practices and procedures and a learning focus in order to foster an evaluative culture (https://www.betterevaluation.org, accessed January 2022).

To assess whether you have a culture of learning, ask yourself these questions:

1. 1. What kind of information do we collect? Do we seek to understand our impact and not just measure what we have done?
   2. What systems, practices and procedures do we have in place that support performance measurement? Are all staff members required to collect data and to use data in program planning and implementation? If not, why not?
   3. How often do we review the information we collect and what do we do with the results? Is the information consistently used to improve upon our programs and services?
   4. With whom are the results shared? Is it just external funders or do we share results with staff, partners and other stakeholders to seek feedback and identify solutions to address issues?
   5. Do we give staff dedicated opportunities to learn and share knowledge and information?
   6. Do we encourage honest and meaningful examination of mistakes and poor performance and provide opportunities and support to improve upon performance?
   7. Do we value learning and growth? How do we communicate that to our staff?

Once you have a better sense of your current practices, you can then identify areas you need to strengthen to foster an evaluative culture. Perhaps you have effective systems in place to capture data, but that information is primarily used by leadership and shared with funders and Board members. Creating internal dashboards that present results to all staff will help encourage knowledge sharing and data use.  Having quarterly team meetings to examine evaluation results and identify successes, challenges and opportunities for improvement will foster learning and improve performance.

Building a culture of learning takes time, commitment and effort. Together, we can work to ensure that your organization is primed for optimal performance and growth.